An emulation framework for SDN-NFV based services

Abstract

Due to the emergence of a hyper-connectivity communication paradigm, the "softwarisation" of the Internet infrastructure and of its network management framework is gaining increasing popularity. Cloud computing helps supporting this evolution, together with the emergence of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). This technological paradigm allows to both move services closer to users, ensuring a lower latency in the service fruition, and support personalization of services by means of the migration of the latter towards edge nodes (in the so-called "fog computing" fashion). Actually, the development of cloud services based on the SDN-NFV paradigm has to cope with the availability for researcher and network enthusiasts to access to a full SDN testbed. Target of this paper is to present an emulation framework allowing simplification and cost reduction of network and application functions development, test and deployment. In such a way, the proposed architecture aims at supporting future Internet personal cloud services in a more scalable and sustainable way. Authors also present a proof-of-concept of the described architecture: a live video broadcasting service enabling small/medium and unusual content providers to share events with a restricted number of interested users without the need of adopting a dedicated and expensive data delivery infrastructure and/or subscribing expensive contracts with Telco.